Nazif: Egypt scores 4.1% rate of growth, $3.7 surplus in current transactions

Egypt's Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif said on Tuesday that Arab economies should keep pace with world economy, either in terms of growth rates, modernization or state-of-the-art technologies.

Inaugurating the 28th session of the Arab Central Banks Governors and Monetary Institutions, Nazif underlined the pivotal role of Arab central banks and monetary institutions, particularly in view of the increasing importance of monetary polices, in achieving commodity price stability.

He said despite the weakness of inter-Arab trade, which only represents 9.5 % of the total Arab trade, there are sincere efforts by some Arab institution to give momentum to inter-Arab trade and pump more Arab investments in the Arab states.

The prime minister stressed the need to include service trade in the agreement of the Arab free trade area, adding that such trade amounted to 24 % of the total Arab trade in commodities and services.

He said that the policies and corrective measures recently adopted by Egypt, especially in the slump period that followed the 9/11 attacks, helped to promote investments.

Nazif added that the contributed to achieving a 4.1 % growth rate in the 2003/2004 fiscal year compared to 3.1 % the previous year.

He noted that the improvement in Egyptian economic performance reflected positively on the trade balance with a surplus of $ 3.7 billion in the 2003/2004 fiscal year compared to $ 1.9 the previous year.

Jassem Al-Manaei, Director General of the Arab Monetary Fund, praised the Egyptian government's economic reform efforts, particularly in stabilizing the exchange rate.

He said that the fund has supported the Egyptian drive all along by offering soft loans to the tune of $ 750 million as well as specialized technical assistance.